


Old Souls

by Lamprey



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: M/M, lieumon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-14
Updated: 2012-12-14
Packaged: 2017-11-21 02:13:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lamprey/pseuds/Lamprey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes souls are drawn together, and two people have no choice but to be caught in each other's orbit. Eight chapter fic about Amon and his Lieutenant's developing relationship and beyond.</p><p>Day 1 (Spy): New underground headquarters, with convenient living arrangements and Liu is learning to read/write and thinks about that guy on the other side of the wall a bunch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Spy

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Lieumon Week, this is a continuous fic that incorporates the prompts in each chapter.

_It makes sense for my quarters to be next to my leader’s. Just the two of us on one floor. I’m his second-in-command._

  
This is what the Lieutenant tells himself as his heart drums loud in his ribcage while he looks at the floor plan of the new underground bunkers, built to accommodate the inevitable and expected wave of new members after the upcoming rally, their first. A thin wall of decaying wood separates the mirrored rooms (a few inches separates their wall-mounted beds but the Lieutenant makes a conscious effort to not focus on that detail), there is a shared kitchen accessible only by locked doors ( _it’s because we run on the same schedule_ , he tells himself).

Worry suddenly swells in his chest that the proximity will fill his fingers with daring and temptation will force his hands under the mask and rip the porcelain away from scarred flesh. The Lieutenant breathes, willing the worry away with a half-hearted scoff. Closer proximity is not the bridge that crosses the emotional, spiritual, and power chasm that Amon carefully digs, digs, digs, with porcelain, words, and just causes.  _This arrangement is purely logical and convenient,_  the Lieutenant shouts and echoes and reasons inside his head.  
  
And so the next days (or perhaps weeks masquerading as unchanging days) are exactly like that. Logical, convenient. The shrill of Amon’s hand-wound alarm travels through the thin walls and there is steaming congee with pork and scallions and fried dough with glistening oil on the table in the kitchen before the alarm stops. A warm apron hastily hung up with just a few more wrinkles and a few more spots of oil stains is the only evidence that breakfast does not materialize out of thin air. They leave their rooms together in silence and ascend the steps to the planning room in tandem. They leave the planning room together in spirited discussions on long-term and short term goals and descend the steps to their rooms in serious conversations on tactics. Campaigns solidify, task forces become more focused, they attune to the needs and morale of the Equalists. Logical, convenient.  
  
Always, Amon and his Lieutenant enter their rooms separately. Every night, the Lieutenant washes up, tidies the kitchen, puts on his short square glasses and drills the stroke order of characters into his eyes, feels them out with a brush, and carefully folds up parchment paper full of crude sentences and even rougher brushwork for a patient Hiroshi to review. Illiteracy is the perfect foe, every nightly battle the Lieutenant wages leaves body and mind too tired to wander (wonder) to the space on the other side of the wall. Sleep claims victory even before the Lieutenant’s body hits the bamboo mat. Every night (week) is like this.  
  
Now is the night before the first Equalist rally. His literacy exercises losing against his anticipatory energy, the Lieutenant instead grabs the rally poster and reads the calligraphy over and over. There is only mounting impatience where there should be a sense of proud accomplishment at finally being able to read the Equalist propaganda the artists in their bunker so eloquently create. His eyes brush across the illustration of Amon repeatedly before his mind wises up and his body obeys the mind and wrenches him from the poster and into bed. Sleep decides to evade the Lieutenant for as long as possible, he writes curses in the correct stroke order in his mind. And soon, the curses then get the stroke order wrong and he gives up (in) and turns towards the wall, closes his eyes, and listens to the space on the other side of the wall. Just this night, the Lieutenant allows curiosity a victory.  
  
He is unsurprised to hear the steady rhythm of papers shuffling. A minute, and then a paper shuffle. 15 shuffles, or perhaps 60. Lieutenant makes a silent goal to get his reading speed to that level in the next few months. It is a goal he makes with a shade of tinged jealousy. The shuffles stop, a pause, and fabric rustles reach his ears. One-two (leather gauntlets), three-four (left boot right boot), five (coat), six (shirt), seven (pants). His ears turn red before the Lieutenant realizes his mind is sketching a topless Amon in his head and he waves his hand in front of his eyes to turn the image into a haze that is quickly, willfully, erased.  
  
A slight rumble makes his bed jump when Amon (he imagines) falls into his bed, the metal frame creaks in offense. The barely audible clink of porcelain against mahogany seems to echo inside of the Lieutenant’s head, growing louder as it bounces around faster and faster, like his heart and breaths. His body seems oblivious (hyper-aware) of the body a few inches on the other side of the wall. A body with ears that hear as much as his. His mind tries to establish dominance. Breathes in, breathes out, 4 seconds for inhale, 4 seconds for exhale.  _I’m sleeping._  Repeat. Repeat some more.  
  
But then Lieutenant notices a similar rhythm inches away. A soft intake of breath (4 seconds), and a whistling exhale of breath (5 seconds). It repeats. He listens as his body forgets that it pretends to sleep and relaxes into a natural state of breathing. Amon sleeps, like he does every night, a few inches of wood away from the Lieutenant. He listens to the air enter soft (scarred) lips, imagines warm air exit through scarred (soft) lips. He’s listening when sleep decides to sit heavy on his eyelids. He’s listening through a sleep-drunk mind as he presses one finger into the decaying wood wall, and drags his fingers across its surface.  
  
我 (this word rumbles in his throat)  _I_  
  
爱 (this one issues shakily from his mouth) _love_  
  
你 (and this one he whispers) _you_  
  
He thinks that he perhaps forgets to go across before he goes down on the second radical on that last character but the answer to that is swallowed up by sleep. His breaths are steady, he inhales (5 seconds), he exhales (4 seconds). Repeat.  
  
The warmth of his correctly-drawn characters lingers on the wooden wall.  
  
Amon turns his head away from the wall and stares at the unchanging ceiling with even breaths until his shrill alarm announces the new day (week). He waits, listens to the shrill alarm, before he makes his way to the kitchen. He opens the door to find a bowl of warm congee with pork bits and scallions and fried dough still glistening. A torn piece of parchment lies beneath the bowl, being molded by the hot ceramic. There are two carefully written characters on it:  
  
好运  _(Hao Yun: Good Luck)_


	2. Flirt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes souls are drawn together, and two people have no choice but to be caught in each other's orbit. Eight chapter fic about Amon and his Lieutenant's developing relationship and beyond.
> 
> Day 2 (Flirt): Liu is still learning to write, and now he has to write some slogans on some propaganda posters. What will he do?

Impatience mars the Lieutenant’s steps with a slight skip as he looks over hunched over backs of Equalists. Their hands wave over piles of parchment, jet black ink bleeding in ever controlled streams from horsehair brushes. Some hold the brush in the stiff academic way they were taught, slight pauses before each radical of each character as they write it in their heads first (across first then down, left then right, work your way from the top down). Others seem to be finger painting with the base of the horsehair, dragging abused fibers into the porous parchment. Inelegant, but still legible, at least. A very select few dance graces, the brush like a partner they twirl and follow and lead all over the page in a pageant of inked steps. Their whole arm possessed, the calligraphy attempts to dance right off the page and into the air and sky.  _It’s almost like water bending_ , muses the Lieutenant in between fits of aggravation. Aggravation that worsens slightly when he realizes he just compared something beautiful to something grotesque and unnatural.  
  
Along the far side of the room are Equalists in aprons splashed with red, yellow, and black inks (splashes that travel from hands to pants to faces). They pull squeegees of ink over silk attached to wood frames, printing the blank paper with the red sun and the lines of Amon’s mask. The illustration screens are all they could spirit out after their sympathetic printing press was raided the night before distribution. The rally is tomorrow and none of the posters have writing on them, Hiroshi is out of town visiting one of his new factories, so Amon and the Lieutenant had politely knocked on each door to every Equalist’s living quarters and drafted every literate and every artisan to form a human assembly line that is going into its 24th hour.  
  
The Lieutenant stamps his foot into the metal floor, his brothers and sisters mistake the root of his impatience to the slow and arduous process, they’re only halfway through their quantities and bodies dwindle faster than the mind’s will. He’s had enough, and he settles his voice into his chest and booms it across the auditorium.  
  
“Break! Come back in a few hours, rest up! I don’t want any mistakes from fatigue on the second half!”  
  
The tired comrades rise from their stations with a fair bit of reluctance, some almost think aloud whether to refuse or to give in. But they give in with sighs and shuffle out of the room, leaving the Lieutenant alone in the auditorium smelling of ink, parchment, and the weariness of unfinished work.  
  
Amon left him in charge of managing the assembly line as he went to procure distribution methods with a handful of riders. Only half of the posters lay finished, in varying degrees of calligraphy, ranges from barely readable to too good to be on anything less than the finest terracotta. As he reviews the piles of slightly damp posters, his annoyance bubbles from the pit in his stomach and overflows into his arm and he roughly grabs a piece of blank parchment and brush, picks a worktable and slams the parchment onto it, and splashes the brush-head into a nearby well of ink.  
  
Leaning over to look at a finished poster, he tries to memorize the unknown character at the source of his frustration, the last character in the slogan. A character he was too embarrassed (full of pride) to ask the meaning of, a character that taunts him and reveals no secrets.  
  
國 (guo)  
  
He knows the order (top to bottom, left to right) but the Lieutenant’s hands oppose all his attempts to make it look legible. The radicals spill out of the box, the radicals deform to fit inside the box, he tries to cheat by drawing the radicals first, and the box deforms too tall (too wide) or doesn’t close at all. Soon, the paper fills with miswritten strokes peppered with splashes of frustration, a paper barrier between feeling useful and feeling useless.  
  
The violent crumple of paper echoes and bounces through the auditorium, he grabs another and fumes for a pause. One ink-laden strand touches the surface before the Lieutenant feels a gravity outside his range of awareness intone behind him.  
  
“You should not waste paper like that, Lieutenant.”  
  
Rigidity seizes the Lieutenant as it travels up his legs and up his body and freezes him in a salute, tip of finger to tip of eyebrow, mustache swinging slightly. Heat settles on his face, on his cheeks. “Sir, sorry, sir. I did not hear you come in, I’m sorry,” stammers the Lieutenant, looking at the white porcelain face, hooded by his coat, by dim lighting, hands clasped behind him, as always.  
  
“Too many ‘sir’s in that sentence. I wonder if your trysts in the bedroom are similarly filled with salutations.” Amon muses the reaction the Lieutenant wears on his face to be akin to a catfish, with his long, dangling whiskers. A particularly red one, at that. Quickly getting even more red.  
  
“I am only joking, please. At ease. Tell me what you are doing.”  
  
The Lieutenant takes a deep breath, unconsciously wipes his palms on his thighs, and starts, “Well, we are only halfway through writing the slogans on the posters, but the posters are all colored in, I ordered a few hours of break for the sake of morale, supplies are g-”  
  
Amon takes a step forward, the Lieutenant thinks he feels gravity condense into his body.  
  
“I mean you, Lieutenant. What are you doing?”  
  
The easy confident tone of a commanding subordinate evaporates almost visibly from the Lieutenant. He wipes his sweaty palms on his thighs, pointedly avoids the eyes of Amon’s mask. Explanations form, dissolve, reform behind the Lieutenant’s pale-as-ice eyes. The explanation that wins comes out in a small voice, “I wanted to help, but I can’t.”  
  
A small angled shift of the mask towards his Lieutenant, “Why is that?”  
  
 _My calligraphy is inelegant. I have an unsteady hand. I have to supervise the process. I only learned to read and write in the last few months. Hiroshi left before I could learn about these characters. No one told me what the slogan says. I was too ashamed to ask. I can’t write this blasted character._  
  
“I can’t read it. The last character.” Not a muscle moves. The lighting obscures Amon’s eyes, the Lieutenant imagines softening (hardening), neutral blue eyes.  
  
“Nothing to be ashamed of, Lieutenant. Not everyone is afforded the equal chance at an education, especially someone with as humble roots as you. Come, let me assist you, write the character out for me.” There. Catfish look again. It is brief as the Lieutenant stiffly turns back around, dips unsteadily into the inkwell and presses quavering tip to paper. He waits for instruction in that deep, silky voice of his when Amon lays each finger into the betweens of the Lieutenant’s fingers and holds his palm over white knuckles.  
  
“It’s easier if I guide you like this,” reassures a voice from near his right ear, whistling slightly as it passes through a smiling (frowning) slit. The angle of Amon’s eyes in his mask makes him unable to see the deepening red of the Lieutenant’s ears, at least this is what the Lieutenant hopes. Amon squeezes the Lieutenant’s hand into a down movement. An even line is left in the wake of brush.  
  
“This character means nation, or country. Pretend the box is a nation’s borders.” Amon goes left to right and down. He encloses the box left to right. The Lieutenant feels trapped, left to right.  
  
“Box off a third of it in the left corner.” Amon lifts his hand from the Lieutenant’s, fingers brush so lightly on the knuckles that they leave only vague tingles. Amon ghosts a border, dragging his finger inside the box. His student tries very hard to force the image of Amon’s finger on bare skin from his mind (he imagines it, anyway).  
  
“In this corner, imagine a hoe leaning against a beam.” Amon presses warmth into the Lieutenant’s hand and travels his hand across, down then a slight flip, and another down flip. Even pressure accented with grace overcomes the unsure shakes of the Lieutenant’s hand. The Lieutenant thinks of how graceful Amon’s writing is. This is better than thinking of how warm his body is, hovering behind his back without touching. How warm it could be if they touched. How warm his hand is, pressed reassuringly into his. The Lieutenant has not noticed he is not thinking of how graceful Amon’s writing is.  
  
He does not want to notice that Amon’s body has pressed into his back as he leans his porcelain face closer. His hopelessly red ear twitches as warm breath spills out of the porcelain smile, tickling (teasing) slightly. “And finally, put a little farmhouse here, with a small little fence.” He finishes the character in the lower left corner with a box and a line beneath it. It is a very correctly-drawn character. The Lieutenant is thinking of the family that lives in the little house with their giant hoe inside a whole nation, wonders about how many children they have. He does this to clear his head and mind of Amon’s warm body and warm hand and warm breath. He does this before he reads fondness in Amon’s tone, reads affection in his blue eyes, reads heat in the press of Amon’s hand to his.  
  
He does this before the rhythm in his chest becomes pained.  
  
Amon parts and the sudden vacuum of heat from body, hand, ear, grants the Lieutenant a tinge of pain in his chest, he convinces himself he doesn’t notice the pain. Far away, he can hear Amon request him to write it by himself. A hand not quite his own holding a brush he can’t feel presses fibers to paper and moves around. Leaves an ink trail, he thinks. He hears a laugh from far away, perhaps a light-hearted admonishment, and a sigh.  
  
The Lieutenant jumps at his station when Amon slams a bunch of unfinished posters on the table to the right of his. With eyes staring a smile and a head tilt leaning a smirk, he says, “Your writing of that character is terrible. So how about you write the first two characters, and I’ll do the last? Can you write the first two?” There’s a gentle tone in the last question that the Lieutenant struggles to not misconstrue. He nods his head with nervous ups and downs.  
  
So they brush, write, toil away in awkward silence where the Lieutenant can still hear his heart beating in his chest, hoping Amon can’t hear it, also. The awkward silence stretches into easy conversation about Equalist operations, his heart calms, beating as he expects it to beat. The easy conversation stretches into comfortable silence, hearts beat slowly. Hours stretch, and bleary-eyed Equalists enter the auditorium to find their leader writing, then their Lieutenant writing, and a small but respectable pile of finished posters to Amon’s right. Equally contributing to the effort.  
  
Alert-eyed Equalists fill the tables in the auditorium and the comfortable silence is laden with rustles of paper, squirts of ink, scratches of fiber to paper, and energetic steps. They manage to finish the rest of the posters in a quarter of the time they expected. They load rolled posters into disguised trucks and rope them to motorbikes and they exit the underground to pepper Republic City.  
  
The Lieutenant isn’t around to see the posters leave. Or to see them finished. He’s been carried off to his room, his limp body strung over armored shoulders after gauntleted arms had caught him when sleep knocked on his head and sent him falling backwards. Amon’s body is very warm below the Lieutenant’s body, his hands very warm on his arm and leg. He won’t remember a dream of it, even his dreams were too tired to visit the Lieutenant’s head. Amon lays him gently, very gently on his bed, and leaves him to his dreamless sleep.  
  
Amon’s shrill alarm goes off, and the Lieutenant wakes up with a start, panic filling his veins and sluggishness sticking to his muscles. No time to check on the posters, he rushes to the kitchen, grabs pots and promptly drops them at the feet of Amon, already masked, already hooded, standing near the table with pen and paper, his (warm) hands folded behind him. He snaps straight as bamboo, opens his mouth and only an ‘s’ sound issues from his lips when a finger presses to his lips and strangles the word. The Lieutenant’s heart is beating out of his chest, into his ears, and into the quiet kitchen, he fears.  
  
“There will be no ‘sir”s in this space, Liu,” Amon advises sternly, blue eyes piercing, mouth slit smirking (or frowning). He releases his finger from Liu’s mouth, his spell still leaving him locked in place. Only Amon sitting down and a pointed gesture to the other chair breaks the spell, and Liu slowly settles into the chair opposite Amon, his eyes betraying a scramble of trying to make sense. Trying to never misconstrue.  
  
“Hiroshi will be spending the next few months developing a glove weapon for us to counter Benders. I’m afraid he won’t be able to help you with your lessons from now on,” states Amon, hands folded in front of him. As always, Liu wears his emotions in plain sight, imperceptible shoulder fall, ice blue eyes that look away for a brief moment.  
  
“But.”  
  
A chin tilt up, towards Amon. Ice blue eyes that lock with his gray blue ones, made grayer by the shadow of the mask’s brow.  
  
“I’ll be happy to help you on your lessons from now on. Every morning. It is, after all, convenient.” Amon’s mouth seems to change expression, almost like witchcraft, smiling gently, instead of smirking mockingly, his offer hanging in the air.  
  
Liu has words on his tongue, of unworthiness, of worship, of love (though those words have never left his tongue). They evaporate, and all that is left is a sincere, “Thank you.”  
  
“Now, shall we work on your writing of nation?”  
  
Liu smiles, and they begin their first lesson.


	3. Cooking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes souls are drawn together, and two people have no choice but to be caught in each other's orbit. Eight chapter fic about Amon and his Lieutenant's developing relationship and beyond.
> 
> Day 3 (Cooking): Tragedy strikes the Equalist movement. Amon is despondent, so Liu decides to lift his spirits with food. Explicit.

The heady scent of incense and burned paper clings to clothing like a ghosts digging their fingers into fabric. Amon, Liu, and any Equalist not on a mission stood, impassive, on an abandoned, desolate stretch of the sea with tendrils of daylight silently invading the dark blue sky with light blues. White fabric wraps around every head, from forehead and tied simply in the back. Amon has his hood down, the white headband covering his chestnut hair behind his mask. Some still had their uniform on, Liu and a handful of others had formal clothing on, having heard the news before they had dressed. A knock, some names said, and a white headband folded neatly at their doors.

There are no bodies to bury in the sea, only regrets. And after all, the bodies lie on slabs in a cold place in the police headquarters, waiting for their names to be revealed. A few will never give up their secrets, they have no families to give such secrets to.  
  
Eight piles of paper adorned with squares of silver, gold, or red inks burn neatly, tiny charred black pieces flutter away, twisting and turning until they disappear. Incense sticks grow out of eight spots in the wet sand like blossoms, sandalwood smoke twirls upwards like ink drops in a bowl of water. Occasionally, an Equalist glances at Amon, some wonder what emotions churn beneath porcelain, some vaguely expect words that would be a salve to their pain, some, some just look to him out of habit (like his second-in-command), their guiding leader through it all. But Amon wears silence like a mask, and betrays no emotion.

The sky bleeds orange from the bottom up like the piles of burning joss paper, silence still hangs heavy in the air with sandalwood and burning paper. Incense sticks stand weakly as thin pillars of ash, crumbling and succumbing to air. After a quick glance at Amon still wearing a mask of porcelain and silence, Liu stands up just a little straighter from the burden of command, removes his headband, and quietly proclaims, “Let’s go home.”  
  
Black-clad Equalists with white scarves file past him, with hands intertwined or arms pulling shoulders close, crunching wet sand beneath their boots. So many eyes, puffy, red, dull, shiny, determined. A few nod at Liu, most look down, some look back at the gently rippling water. As quick as sunrise, Liu is left to stare at Amon alone, his back towards him, unmoving, impassive. A lonely sentinel with his hands clasped behind him, staring amid piles of soot and ash. Heavy sorrow constricts Liu’s throat with sharp needles, subordinate staring at his superior, he feels the chasm stretch between them. A chasm he doesn’t dare even dream of crossing, for fear that the other side will stretch until he can no longer see it.  
  
Yet, maybe.  
  
Liu strides to Amon and outstretches a hand to Amon’s left shoulder. He freezes an inch (a moment) away, clenching, unclenching, rethinking, reconsidering. He withdraws his hand, it falls useless to his side. The words catch in his throat (they always do when it’s like this), but manage to free themselves, “Sir, you should get some rest.”  
  
A small minute turn of the head, and there’s a peak of porcelain from the hood. “Let me be,” he says, softly. There is no command in his tone. There isn’t any tone at all. It’s the first time Liu has heard his leader speak without subtle inflections, with words coated smooth and sure. Liu’s aware of a dull pain in his chest. He’s aware of the chasm, and swallows up the pain, as always.  
  
Amon drops his head, almost imperceptibly, and adds in a smaller, deader voice, “Please.”  
  
It’s a deep chasm, and Amon is standing on the other side so far away. Liu bows at the waist, whispering, “Yes sir,” turns and starts the walk towards the storm drain where their base is hidden away from benders and non-benders. Liu walks out of sight of the waterline.  
  
The deadpan voice of Amon haunts Liu like the presence of their dead comrades. It repeats, over and over in his head. Regret deepens at having left a shoulder untouched, but it wouldn’t have mattered (he tells himself). Chill water droplets sprinkle from a gray early morning sky and pattern Liu’s gray suit tiny dark gray dots.  
  
An image, of Amon getting soaked standing, hands clasped, watching the still water seem to vibrate from the rain, staring and staring. The muscles in Liu’s legs start the motion to turn around, but he stops them. There will be no moving Amon from his silent sentry, he will move for no one (the last thought Liu thinks with a bitter aftertaste noted with admiration). But, Amon will need to return to base, eventually, soaked through. Or return much later, dried off from being soaked through. Liu hopes, anyway.  
  
So his legs take him the mile along the coast, past piers with recently moored fishing boats, past workers loading crates with grunts and huffs and occasional curses into truck, into a large pier populated by stalls and chatter. Steady rain beats percussion on plastic tarps of green, blue, and stripes. Sellers hail Liu with proclamations of wares caught this fine morning and won’t you like to see for yourself how plump this is?  
  
Lessons with Amon allow Liu to read the scrawled signs of sea prunes (30 yuan for 3), octopus (15 yuan per lb), and seal meat (choice cuts starting at 40 yuan). He roughly picks up this, squeezes that, smells this, berating that this isn’t that fresh or that’s too expensive and he wouldn’t pay 20 yuan for that. He fills the role of haggling customer with theatrics well practiced from many upon many undercover roles he’s played. He leaves with bright red bags of crisp seaweed, half a roast arctic hen, fresh squid, and a single ocean kumquat, a self-satisfied smile on his face and grumbling sellers in his wake.

***

Liu’s hand-pulled green seaweed noodles are lifted by coriander from boiling water when he hears the door to Amon’s room open and close. The pit-pat of boiling soups drowns out whatever subsequent sounds issue from his room. Grabbing a large soup bowl, he splashes ocean-kumquat soup base in and delicately transfers the hot, steaming noodles from coriander with wooden, warped chopsticks. He take a cleaver and chops the hen into even pieces, bone, skin, and all, and lays it neatly on the floating bed of noodles. With santoku knife, he slices squid, dices some scallions, pinches some white pepper, and throws a handful of bean sprouts into the noodle soup bowl. Quickly peeling a boiled egg that had since cooled, he bisects it and gently lays it yolk side up, crowning the noodle soup. Liu regards his dish proudly, silently thanking his brief stint working restaurants and Amon’s impeccable timing.  
  
He goes to the door to Amon’s room, puts his ear to the wood, listening for any signs that he’s not to be disturbed. There are no sounds. Lightly rapping the door with his knuckles, he calls out, “Sir, I have prepared you dinner.”  
  
No response. “Sir?” Liu calls out cautiously. Still no response. His confidence bleeds out of him, the hours of anticipation seem to evaporate into cold dread in his stomach. Perhaps best to leave him alone.  _You are a fool, you can’t comfort him, even as a friend._  
  
 _You aren’t his friend._ A gaping, groaning chasm.  
  
Then, an image. A hand frozen in indecision, reaching out to almost touch Amon’s shoulder. It never does. White headband soaked to transparency, and rain dripping from chestnut hair. A masked lonely man staring at sea made prickly by raindrops.  
  
And a delectable soup that took hours to craft cooling by the minute.  
  
Liu roughly grabs a wooden tray, carefully places the soup bowl on it with soup spoon and chopsticks, and carries it to the door. “Sir, I’m coming in,” he announces. He times a mental image of Amon (not topless with some mental effort) putting his mask on and tying it behind him, and then opens the door with his elbow, hot, steaming soup between hands.  
  
Amon’s room is like his own, with few furnishings. His room is unlike Liu’s, there is scarcely an inch of wall uncovered. Yellowing maps of Republic City and the world plaster the far wall, partially obscured by a large wooden desk, much larger than Liu’s. Crinkled building plans and topography and blueprints and a chart of the human body’s chi points and softly wrinkled newspaper clippings on the wall Liu shares with Amon. There are neat piles of papers on the desk against the wall, none away from the wall, and a gently curving blossoming arc of papers strewn from the desk. A sweeping arm powered by rage topping buildings made of speeches, letters, and sketches.  
  
His leader sits a bit away from his desk in a chair with four uneven legs and a simple back. He slouches with the weight of the ocean on his shoulders, his head tilted over the chair’s back, his neck overextended, porcelain mask floating like a boat, lidded eyes staring skyward, legs out stiff like planks. Arms hang heavily down like being weighed by anchors. Bare arms, Liu notices, finally.  
  
Amon’s topless. His sopping wet coat and tabard lay abandoned in a corner near kitchen door, leaking rain (maybe tears) in trails outwards. Gauntlets, belt, shirt, and shoulder armor, discarded in a trail from the door. An almost transparent white headband on top of it all. Amon’s damp, chiseled chest rises and falls in slow breaths, always steady. He’s more than everything Liu had dreamt and fantasized about. It was the last thing he wanted to think about now. Amon does not react to Liu’s intrusion. He stares and stares at a spot in the ceiling.  
  
With long strides on his long legs, Liu crosses to Amon’s desk, taking care to step over splayed legs, taking care to look at the desk only, and gently lays the tray on the desk. “Please eat, sir,” mumbles Liu quietly, he turns around and uses his long legs to make long strides back to the kitchen door.  
  
“Stop,” orders a voice tattered with hoarseness and hours of silence. Liu stops, turns his head slowly around, checks out of the corner of his eye to confirm that Amon still has his mask on, and turns all the way around.  
  
Amon is bent over the noodle soup, seated forward on the edge of his chair, steam caressing porcelain, regarding the dish. Liu wants to inquire, but his mouth is sealed shut by anxious expectation, his legs rooted by command, his chest full of the dread before judgement.  
  
After a moment (an eternity), it is Amon who inquires. “Where did you learn to cook?”  
  
There are many questions that Amon asks of Liu (but none about pasts), and none that Liu asks of Amon (because all of his are about Amon). An unsure cough, a pause, and Liu answers, “After I was discharged from the forces, sir.”  
  
“Go on.”  
  
“There wasn’t much work for an illiterate non-bender, even with an honorable discharge. But you don’t really need to read to cook.” It surprises Liu how easy it is to speak the more words he spills out of his mouth.  
  
“What made you leave?”  
  
“Firebenders. Why keep a non-bender around when you can pay a firebender for less? They fry eggs on their palms and all they need to do is touch a pot of water to make tea.” Liu tries to say the last bit with humor, but bitterness creeps in.  
  
“I doubt they can sear a tuna shark like you can,” exclaims Amon, his voice obscured by a weak smirk, grief in the back of his throat, and a slit in porcelain.  
  
Liu chuckles easily. “I doubt I can overcook a bullsteak like they can,” he responds.  
  
And the heavy air is lightened with weak chuckling rumbling from a mask. But it stretches back into uncomfortable silence. Amon turns his head and is staring hooded blue eyes into blue eyes. They’re like two deep blue chasms, thinks Liu.  
  
“Why did you go with a Water Tribe recipe tonight?” Amon softly asks, taking chopsticks and swirling the green noodles around, steam rotating softly.  
  
 _In the winter, you are never cold, we all wear huge coats of deer-sheepskin and you are always in your gray outfit, you never so much as shiver during cold rain, wet sleet, and great big snowfalls. And your skin, the glimpses I see of your hands, your neck, your chin, and now. They’re the color of black tea and milk, like the kind they get with cassava pearls and chill._  
  
“I wanted to try something different,” lies Liu, hopes that his voice doesn’t out him as a liar, a stalker, an admirer with infatuation in his chest and loyalty in his veins. Amon turns back to the dish, the steam twists and twirls through the openings in his mask.  
  
“It smells like home,” he finally says, barely audible and so softly. Amon grabs the corner of his mask and Liu only sees the beginning of a upwards wrenching motion before he squeezes his eyes shut.  
  
“Sir!” he exclaims, panic in his tone. “Please be more careful!”  
  
“I am,” answers Amon. Liu can hear him pick up his spoon, and chew a mouthful of soup and noodles. “Tastes like home.” More eating noises, and a steady clink of chopsticks against ceramic accented with small splashes.  
  
Liu hangs on to Amon’s approving words like hands holding on a cliff over a gaping chasm. They hit his chest like a mass and spreads warmth through his chest. It’s a small moment, but it’ll do. Eyes still shut, he turns around gingerly and walks slowly in the direction of the kitchen door. He hears a large splash and Liu nearly whips around, his eyes wide. He jerks his head back and calls out, eyes still shut, “Sir! Are you alright? Did you spill the soup?”  
  
A pause. And finally, “No.” There’s a dark undertone to it, but Liu doesn’t hear it. So he continues to walk gracelessly into a shut door.  
  
He fumbles a bit, trying to feel the knob. He doesn’t remember shutting it. He doesn’t remember a shutting sound, either. Oh spirits, he is embarrassed, where is that blasted knob. His knuckles crash into it with some pain and he grabs it.  
  
“Stop,” Amon calls out. His voice seems to come from somewhere higher. He’s standing up, Liu realizes. “Turn around.” Liu obeys, eyes still closed, confusion and rising panic slowing his turn.  
  
“Sir?”  
  
“What did I say about using ‘sir’ in this space?” Amon says this without anger, or annoyance, only teasingly. With a passing cloud of sadness. Liu hears soft steps coming towards him. Panic.  
  
“S-Amon. What are you doing?” Liu imagines a grieving Amon taking out his anger out on him on the surface of his closed eyelids. He doesn’t believe for a second Amon would do that, but it was better than imagining something much more terrifying.  
  
“Just want to ask you a few things, Liu,” states Amon without tone, stopping his approach, the distance between them equal to the length of a motorbike, or so Liu estimates. He starts, “Would you follow me anywhere?”  
  
“Everywhere,” answers Liu, without hesitation, sounding surer than he feels.  
  
“Would you obey my every command?” asks Amon, craze entering into his voice. A voice that seems to be closer. He has taken a step forward under silence.  
  
“I….yes, of course.” Liu’s chest is burning, he thinks it’s burning from Amon’s raw emotion radiating from somewhere way too close.  
  
“Even if I told you to jump off a cliff? Into fire? Into the den of wolves?” His voice is rising, all careful restraints of aloofness gone, replaced by sheer, unbridled, pure emotion, a swirling chasm of sorrow, anger, terror, and something else. He’s closer, too.  
  
“Amon…” His heart is breaking at the edges, like Amon’s voice. Amon’s loneliness is overwhelming. He’s still stepping forward.  
  
“Even if I give you an order that you know sends you to your death?!” Strong hands clasp Liu’s shoulders, hot breath brushes Liu’s closed eyelids. Fingers dig dig dig into his skin, it hurts, but Liu imagines it hurts less than his heart. He imagines his heart hurts less than Amon’s soul.  
  
“Always.” Liu’s answer is calm, sure. “No matter what you are, leader or friend.” It hurts, that last word, but he has to say it. Liu’s head feels wonderfully clear. He inwardly surrenders his feelings. He turns away from the chasm, he doesn’t try to look to the other side. But he will stand there. With a gentle ache in his heart. He’s okay with that.  
  
Amon’s hands loosen. Liu is no longer squeezing his eyes shut, but they are closed nonetheless. A pause passes with steady breaths, and slowing heartbeats.  
  
“Open your eyes.” And just like that, Liu’s heart storms out of the gate and tries to race desperately out of his ribcage. He’s imaging Amon hitting him when he opens his eyes. Except he isn’t, he’s imagining something more terrifying.  
  
“OPEN YOUR EYES!” Amon shouts, his voice raw, disturbing Liu’s roughly textured hair, his long mustache. Amon is intimidating when he’s in control. He’s absolutely terrifying when he isn’t.  
  
Liu imagines reciprocation with this terrifying scarred man with a porcelain mask and a great wall between his soul and everyone, standing on the far side of a deep chasm, where Liu could fall forever.  
  
And so, Liu obeys. He opens slowly and only sees a hand rapidly increasing in size enveloping his eyes with warm skin and sweat and darkness and pushing his head into wooden door with a soft knock. Then lips. Soft, wet lips press to his dry ones. Concentrated hot breaths warm Liu’s lower lip. Amon’s lips drag warmth and wet across Liu’s chapped lips. Liu opens his mouth from surprise and overwhelming sensations and Amon presses deeper, his free hand holds Liu’s cheek like a bird threatening to fly away. He sucks at his lips, his tongue, all of Liu’s insides like he’s submerged in water and Liu is the air he needs to live.  
  
Liu feels he’s drowning, falling, his arms raise up to wrap tight around Amon’s chest like he’s hanging on to driftwood in the middle of a maelstrom. He, too, is inhaling Amon, his heat, his insides, convinced that he will suffocate if he breaks the kiss. Teeth clink, lips fit together, tongues crash, fingers tighten. Heat coils inside of bones, and radiates out, through muscle, through skin. Hearts drum so fast without uncertainty weighing them down.  
  
It’s Liu who breaks it, breaths shallow and quick while their upper lips remain connected. He asks (he doesn’t want to), with shaky tones, “Are you sure?”  
  
Upper lips separate, the hand that covers Liu’s eyes slide off (Liu shuts his eyes again), both Amon’s hands brush back past spiky cropped hair and lock fingers into themselves on the back of Liu’s neck. “I don’t want to feel,” whispers breath unto Liu’s lips.  
  
Silence passes a moment, or perhaps half an eternity, and Liu clenches Amon’s shoulders and pushes him back. Amon’s hands separate and Liu can hear them swing down like pendulums. Liu lowers his head so it hangs on his neck, vacuums air through flared nostrils, and breaths, “I want you to. Because I do.”  
  
Liu turns quick as he can manage without sight, twists the doorknob and stumbles into the kitchen, arms support him on the edge of the sink as he leans over, his back to open door. There’s a burning somewhere around his eyes and a stronger burning in his chest, burning away layers of skin and bearing raw skin to pain. A tantalizing taste of reciprocation (but not really, was it) and Liu’s heart starts to crumble piece by piece. Sobs want to twist his throat, but he forces it down with breaths full of effort and will. He opens his eyes, stares without really seeing the metal drain of the large kitchen sink. A vague realization that the door is open creeps up from the back of Liu’s head and he turns around to shut the door, his head down, not looking at the door.  
  
An arm shoots out and from his side bars Liu across the shoulders. Liu has only a quick glance of porcelain before Amon’s left arm surges with force and swings him in an arc towards the table. Liu’s rear hits the edge of the table and his torso topples over and hits wood with a thud. Amon leans over and cups Liu’s face with hands that shake with adrenaline, or emotion, or maybe arousal. Eyes that shine through his mask with clarity, with craze, or maybe tears.  
  
“I don’t want to feel. I don’t want to feel this damnable sorrow. It’s eating me alive. I’m letting it, because I killed those young people. They went to their deaths with eagerness and I can’t even get their damned bodies back!” Liu looks at those blue eyes, they’re crystallized orbs of mad sorrow, he looks away.  
  
“I can’t help get rid of your sadness,” replies Liu, trying so hard to craft his tone with stoicness. It’s easier when he isn’t looking into those eyes.  
  
Amon sinks his head, and lowers his forehead to Liu’s chest (sends a chill from the cold porcelain), hands drag down from Liu’s face to his wrists and he lightly grabs them.  
  
“I’m not asking you too,” he continues, in a voice so small, and so muffled. “But I can’t feel. I can’t feel you. I can’t feel you through this sadness. I’ve lost you. So please.”  
  
Amon squeezes Liu’s wrists.  
  
“I need to feel you more than I feel this. Please,” pleads Amon.  
  
A moment passes (or an eternity) without a response, just Amon laid on top of Liu, both just simply breathing, thoughts churn in their heads. Liu then shifts, untangles his right hand from Amon’s, drags it up Amon’s back, letting his fingers fall into each indent of Amon’s vertebrae. His left hand bends and gently lifts chin up, hand settles on the side of the mask. Liu gazes up into blue chasms, his expression indiscernible. His eyes flutter shut, and he gently lifts Amon’s mask up, places it gently next to them, a clink against wood.  
  
Liu hears Amon give a short, clipped laugh. “You don’t need to close your eyes.”  
  
A hand combs itself into chestnut brown hair at the back of Amon’s head, fingers spread like a net. “Of course I do.”  
  
Liu’s hand grabs hair with quickness and pulls a face he can’t see towards open lips. He mis-aims, and Amon’s lips crash into Liu’s chin, but it is a small delay, and lips find lips, tongue meets tongue, heat finds itself repeated. Liu slides along the roof of Amon’s mouth, along his bottom of his tongue, into the grooves of his teeth. Amon bites at upper lip, chews at lower lip, his mouth open as wide as he can manage.  
  
Amon’s hands slip under Liu’s shirt in tandem, and slide up, pressing at specific points that make Liu gasp into Amon’s mouth. Liu finds the use of chi points unfair, so he slips his hands in tandem past waistband and presses fingers into soft flesh, straightens a few fingers into crevice, palm covering the small of Amon’s back. With a hiss, Amon retaliates and digs his fingertips into points on Liu’s chest. There’s instant gratification as Liu’s hips jerk up, it rolls up his back and leaves him in a gentle arc. Liu’s arms come up and embraces Amon with all elbows, pitches his weight to one side and rolls entangled bodies over, mouths still warring atop.  
  
Liu is plagued with uncertainty, with nervousness, but he’s hopelessly drunk on Amon, he lets his body lead with exploring hands and an invasive mouth, his mind delays in following. His fingers scramble and find their quarry, and they wrench down Amon’s pants with disregard for tearing fabric and drawstrings. His hands push down his own and his body knows what to do before he does, and he presses his concentrated heat into Amon’s, tone enters Amon’s voice, he breaks their kiss and releases a gasp that turns into a moan, his legs falling apart.  
  
Amon locks fingers behind Liu’s head and tries to introduce heat between mouths equal to the heat between their crotches. He’s rolling his hips upwards and forwards as Liu clumsily tries to rub them together, foggy with arousal and attraction and absolutely, stubbornly blind.  
  
There’s a pervasive pressure in Amon, he can feel it deep in his body, it invades his mind, he pulls from Liu. He unlocks a hand from Liu’s neck, spits in it, and roughly grabs Liu’s heat, who gasps, mostly in surprise. He guides the tip low, pushes it slightly in between, trembling all the while. He then takes the other hand and presses somewhere specific on Liu’s chest, like a button.  
  
A gasp from Liu, and another louder gasp from Amon, as Liu bucks forward and is taken completely, Amon’s legs fall apart further, arches of his feet overextended. Liu leans forward and rests hands on Amon’s hips, gasping fast, shaking off too much heat that threatens to engulf him like Amon is. There is so much heat and sensation, thoughts of chasms, cooking, even dead comrades are blissfully absent. For now.  
  
The man below him finds the delay to be most unfavorable, and he clenches mercilessly. A gasp tries to escape Liu’s throat and he swallows it halfway. “Move,” Amon rumbles with threat in his voice, as he folds his fingers into Liu’s fingers on Amon’s hips.  
  
Liu obeys, he rocks at a cautious pace, feeling Amon pulling at him as he pulls back, feeling Amon suck him back in as he pushes in as warm thighs trap him on both sides. Urgency spreads through him like this coiling heat, and cautious pace swells to eager pace, sounds of skin meeting skin with smacks reverberates around the small kitchen. Small moans from Amon float up to Liu’s red ears like music notes. Eager pace speeds to a pace with abandon, the table legs groan and rock in step with Amon’s clipped moans and gasps and breaths. Liu can feel Amon’s backbone curve through the hands on his hips, he can feel the heat around him get tighter and tighter, he can feel Amon’s hips roll rhythmically into Liu’s pace.  
  
First hearing is lost to him, sight was already lost at the moment, and then his whole head as pure sensation and pure heat carries his whole soul away on an impossibly high cloud. He slams into Amon and explodes inside him, feeling his own heat fill the tiny spaces between him and Amon, and slip out in small drips out when Amon clenches in response, breathing his name, and spills onto Liu’s stomach. As Liu floats softly down, his pace slows, punctuated by small and smaller twitches. He can feel Amon being rocked by similar small and smaller shakes and trembles.  
  
Liu falls forward on Amon, still surrounded by him, his head on Amon’s chest, his mustache clinging to the sweat. He wants to say the three words he never says. The words he wrote one time with his finger one night on the wall they share. The sit on his tongue, heavy, but they remain there as sleep suddenly catches and pulls Liu into a dreamless sleep.

***

  
Liu wakes with a start in his own bed, a shrill alarm rings closer than a wall away. He sees Amon sitting at the edge of his bed before his mind realizes it’s Amon sitting at the edge of his bed, alarm in hand, staring at him with porcelain and blue.  
  
“Good afternoon, Lieutenant,” greets Amon, a bit too cheerfully.  
  
“Good…spirits! I should get up!” Liu’s rise is stopped by a stern, gauntleted hand.  
  
“Not today, I’ve ordered a day of rest for everyone.” Liu looks at hood, gauntlets, tabard, armor, and mask.  
  
“Except for yourself.”  
  
“Just going down to the pier.” there’s that toneless voice of Amon’s, but it wasn’t as dead as it was yesterday.  
  
Yesterday.  
  
“Did…we…?” starts Liu, afraid to say the whole sentence aloud, as if it would change everything to a dream.  
  
Amon doesn’t answer, he looks away and produces a red square of fabric with fingers tinged red at the tips.  
  
“For next time,” he states, and lays it on Liu’s chest. “Dinner made an excellent brunch, thank you.” He rises and walks towards the door. Liu picks the red fabric up, sees the threads dyed unevenly.  
  
“This is your mourning headband,” realizes Liu, with somber.  
  
“I don’t intend to wear it again,” Amon says, still walking, authority seeps into his voice, makes his words into an unbreakable promise. He opens the door and closes it behind him.


	4. Enchantment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes souls are drawn together, and two people have no choice but to be caught in each other's orbit. Eight chapter fic about Amon and his Lieutenant's developing relationship and beyond.
> 
> Day 4 (Enchantment): An enchantment is like a gem with many facets that shine many different colors. Short drabbles, some are explicit.

He has beautiful  **e** yes. Unlike the deep ocean blue of his own, Liu has eyes like ice, like a glacier floating in arctic waters. When Liu pulls off his green-tinted goggles, a tangible chill emanates from his pupils, and chills Amon to his bones and settles in his chest.

Amon likes to see himself in them, encased and frozen. He hopes one day to see not porcelain and his ocean-blue eyes reflected in ice, he hopes to see his own face, unscarred and weary. But he isn’t so sure that when he sees his own face in Liu’s eyes, he will recognize it as his own.  
  
Amon holds on to the moments where he can gaze into ice, and collects them like frozen points in time. Then he pulls dyed red cloth over Liu’s eyes.

***

His  **n** eck is where Liu likes to start. He sneaks his hands past the hem of gray hood, his index finger reaches skin first, then middle then ring, then pinky. He presses always softly, warms the spot he marks with warmth before he lowers lips to it, kissing a slow, neat path down, his forehead cooled by porcelain.  
  
His neck is where Liu likes to touch, one thumb on his chin, the second closest connection they have when porcelain is present, the first being the heat that binds them down below, all desperation and rhythm. Liu’s hand sways back and forth on Amon’s neck, breaking and reconnecting the touch, as Amon rocks hips down into hips, muscles on his neck strained to the surface when he cranes neck and porcelain back, where Liu can run fingers down the grooves between muscles.  
  
His neck is where Liu likes to end, kissing the sweat off muscles that twitch leisurely, he imagines soft lips beneath porcelain. Perhaps tomorrow he can trade his sight for a kiss.

***

He has  **c** alloused hands. White and red densities that sit below his fingers and on each segment of finger, like water dripped and Liu tried to catch it. Anybody else would think that the calluses were earned from dual-wielding kali sticks, swinging them, holding onto them upon hard impacts, and grabbing them over and over when they are knocked from his hands.   
  
That’s half true. They’re also from holding unto hot metal of a wok, as he flicks his strong wrist and seared bok choy, water chestnuts, freshwater shrimp pirouette with flames through the air. They’re also from gripping the soft wood handle of a chipped cleaver that he brings down to chop napa cabbage into shreds of green.  
  
Amon knows that sometimes the calluses are from holding his wrists down, as he thrashes around in the dark, his nightmares of wolves and snow and a stern face bleeding out into the real world, for hours. And Liu will hold him down, for hours, knuckles white, his fingers surrounding Amon’s thin wrists.  
  
They give Liu poor circulation sometimes, chills will enter and never leave, and Amon will take his callused hands in his smooth ones, and hold them tight. He’ll see the blood weakly marching through thin tunnels of vessel, and he will silently ask them to go faster (they do). Liu will look at him with a smile in icy blue eyes and mouth and say, “Your hands are always so warm.”  
  
And Amon will only half-smile under porcelain, his eyes twinkling a smile at Liu, his eyebrows and mouth and heart twisted up in shame.

***

Everyone knows Amon to be  **h** ypnotic. Equalists lull themselves to his authoritative command. Benders’ blood turns to lead in their veins to his rumbling tones. Nonbenders will find themselves daydreaming as Amon storytells them with soothing rhythms a city free of gangs full of benders wielding rocks and fire and fear. Liu finds him hypnotic, of course, and his fellow Equalists will assume its Amon’s authority, it’s his voice, its that mask and all the secrets it has and those eyes that unmask you from head to toe through skin and muscle and bone.  
  
And those things are true, yes, but it’s also the way he dances around bending, movements never wasted. It’s the way he just fills all the spaces around Liu, like water poured into a glass of sea-worn pebbles. It’s his voice without authority, coated with sorrow, with affection, with lust. It’s his eyes without walls, inviting you into a bottomless ocean where you can sink forever. It’s even in his mask, with a smile that frowns, a brow that angers with affection.  
  
Liu likens it to an enchantment. A spell that never breaks. Liu hopes it never breaks.

***

He admires the  **a** rt in his veins. But Liu will spin declarations of unworthiness, mar his movements with his low confidence, frame his frown with his long mustache. He lays admiration like egg glaze on almond egg tarts when Amon brushes characters, will talk of Hiroshi like a primary school classmate comparing his scribbles to a the class artist. Lots of “I don’t” and “like you” and “I wish” and more “like you.”  
  
Everyone but him can see the innate talent in him, despite growing up poor in bucolic landscapes where there were no Satomobile buses to take him to a school. It’s not just in the way he paints characters like they’re made of grass swaying gently in a soft wind (“Chicken-scratch,” he dismisses), but the way he arranges toppings on noodle soup (“I have to slice the egg like that or else the yolk will run into the soup,” he reasons), the way he twirls and dances around opponents like he’s calligraphy himself (“Evasive maneuvers,” he explains), the way he moves his hands on Amon’s body, like he’s sculpting a masterpiece from heat and granite that warms to touch (Liu whispers three words, finally, over and over).  
  
Sometimes Amon will watch him through eyes in porcelain as he takes fountain pen and practices characters and sketches a masked man on a bound paper pad he keeps on two nightstands. His look will be serious through square spectacles, bottom lip trapped between teeth. Then he will notice Amon watching and his ears will redden and he will slightly turn away, his shoulder shielding, his posture embarrassed, mutters about things not true about his ‘ink scratches.’  
  
Amon will say that in another life, Liu could have been a renowned calligrapher, where architects and business owners and mourners and new parents will seek him for blessings rendered in ink, the dances of life frozen on parchment.  
  
Liu would reply that he wants no other life than this one and Amon never asks why.

***

There’s a lot of things that he likes about Amon, like his  **n** obility. He knows every Equalist by name, by origin, by personality. He knows every Equalist the day after they join their ranks and don the black and brass and glowing goggles. He will sit at a rickety old wooden table and paint propaganda posters next to his artists, sit in the back with hands clasped behind as an officer briefs his charges and then come up behind them silent and congratulate them with a few words and a pat on the back. He will sit next to his engineers fix generators and lights and gloves and compliment them (for he’s no good with things with lightning coursing through them) and he’ll leave them empowered with second and third and so on winds from Amon’s rare and well-timed compliments.  
  
Ever since they lost eight, Amon insures that no Equalist lost their life. Even if he has to leave them behind for metal cables to ensnare, he jumps into the fray and risks limb, body, and porcelain being knocked from his face to make sure they survived. Right behind him would be Liu, begoggled and electricity dancing around kali sticks, to insure his warm bed at night.  
  
Incarceration was the only casualty they suffered, and the unlucky ones suffered it gladly for Amon. Amon is nobility, and Liu is the knight sworn fealty to him. Such was the spell he cast with his shadow with porcelain. So strong, that later, years later, when a family of five and a half that weaved with air and could bound high into the sky with nary but thought were captured, Liu thinks of how noble Amon is to rid these children of single digit ages of their bending.

***

There are so many  **t** actics in that mind of his, he reminisces. Of course, Amon promoted Liu himself, informally, when Equalists numbered in just two digits. Just after Liu had fended off Triads gangs for days after they held his entire block in the slums he lived in under siege for not having enough for the protection fee. Organizing roving bands that ambushed small groups of gang members with red scarves around their faces and bamboo sticks and rocks and anger in their hands. Rationing their already meager food supplies rice grain by rice grain, and sending pleas for help using a radio with its wires torn out and reconnected, with dots and dashes and urgency (for help only required letters and not words).  
  
The police hadn’t come, it was Amon and his small band instead and they had pushed back the Triads and broken the siege with Liu’s group. Expecting repercussions, Amon and Liu had relocated the residents of his block, the rest became Equalists. The Triads came back with firebenders and oil and found a deserted block.  
  
Amon wanted to make him a major, he already had lieutenants and captains. But Liu had declined, preferring a low rank. Then he had seen Liu’s last name of 中尉* and laughed and declared him Lieutenant (and officially gave him major authority). Liu, only knowing how to write his name, had been oblivious to the meaning then.  
  
*zhongwei is a surname that can also mean first lieutenant

***

He’s always an  **e** arly riser, even when he manages to sleep. Amon grabs the alarm most mornings and will shut it off before its shrill tones shatter Liu’s sleep. He will put on his mask and gently undo the blindfold on Liu. The rush of cold and lack of weight functions as an alarm for Liu, and he will rise shortly to prepare congee and oolong tea and other while Amon goes over the day’s agenda.  
  
Some mornings, dreaming or dreamless, Liu will feel lips on his on the edge of sleep and wakefulness. It’s a pleasant dream, and he kisses back, their lips lazily dance around each other, damp and sluggish. Sometimes in that dream he will feel heat congeal in his stomach as lips close on his crotch and tendrils of unconsciousness will slowly untangle from Liu’s mind as he brings both his hands and dives fingers into chestnut hair, making Amon’s head slightly rotate into him as Liu arches his back ever so slightly.  
  
Sometimes, blinding pressure will smash through his fog of unconsciousness and he grabs chestnut hair with white knuckles and marks Amon’s mouth with lust. Sometimes, tight wet heat will replace tongue and bed and midsection will sag with Amon’s body weight. And then the weight will sink into him, and rise, and then sink again and coiled heat will build and build upon itself and wakefulness will flood Liu as he opens his eyes and sees Amon and porcelain. He will be curved back, beads of sweat adorning him like rainwater, muscles in his neck taut, one hand wrapped around himself and the other with two fingers dragging skin on his neck into clavicle.  
  
And Liu will explode into Amon and tumble out of sleep, leaving torn fibers of rest at his eyes and in his throat. And he will look at the early figure of Amon in a dreamy haze as he, too, releases.

***

He loves the  **d** edication that Liu shows him. It’s in the food Liu makes for him, it’s in the warmth he provides on the rare times Amon is cold with dread, nightmares, or actual cold. It’s the commands he gives and the authority he wields in two hands to lessen the burden Amon deals with day to day, night to night, night to day and so forth.  
  
But he also fears it, the stronger it grows. How quickly Liu will jump into jaws of a polar bear, into a pool of water and a lightning-wielding firebender standing nearby, dive under a levitating boulder, always always always for Amon. How earnest he is when he listens intently to the tightly woven fibers of the story Amon shares with him, of his abusive father, of his lost brother, of a distant mother, of cold and ice and an imaginary firebender giving him imaginary scars and spirits offering a gift of catharsis. Guilt grows and densifies into an ice-cold pit in Amon’s soul.  
  
He fears dedication will end Liu.


	5. Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes souls are drawn together, and two people have no choice but to be caught in each other's orbit. Eight chapter fic about Amon and his Lieutenant's developing relationship and beyond.
> 
> Day 1 (Silence): Summary: Liu suffers a grievous injury, Amon is depressed.

The room is only silent if Amon doesn’t listen to the hum of power in the wires all around them, the rhythmic whips of the ceiling fan, the slow rasp of breaths and the steady hiss of air through tubes. An audible drip drip drip, too, if you listen closely. A curtain of off-white cotton falls from ceiling pipes, draping the cot and its figure in warm light. It opens at the side of the cot, there is a simple stool on three uneven legs that Amon sits on for hours at a time, his shadow cast on cotton, a silent, sitting sentinel, hands clasped in front of him. And, when there is no one in the room except dust and sterile fabric, Amon unclasps his hands and places both on the still hand of Liu. Sometime he twirls the ends of his mustache into sharp points, a sad smile under his mask.  
  
A few sympathetic Equalists had moved a desk into the ward, not as big as the one in Amon’s room, but it is sufficient to hold piles of papers and maps and notes and two bound paper pads full of sketches of a masked man and repeated characters. They don’t question Amon’s endless watch, most assume it’s their close, brother-like friendship. Some assume it’s Amon’s equal concern for all his subordinates, the promise of no one dying on his watch burning fiercely behind porcelain. Just a small few with gaping holes in their hearts and the wisdom of lion-turtles overcome their awe of Amon and squeeze his shoulder, or pat his back once, reassure with words of “He’ll pull through,” “He’s strong,” and “I’m sorry.” He never responds, but he always bows with a tiny tilt of mask.  
  
Ever since they rushed Liu with closed eyes, twitches all over his body, and burns blossoming across his chest, Amon keeps vigil at his bedside after improvised use of a Sato glove restored the beats of Liu’s heart. Seven days (seven nights), Amon traces his eyes along the tubes that feed air into his open, chapped lips, lightly holds between thumb and index finger the straw that feeds and quenches Liu’s body through a needle in his forearm, and watches Equalists with first aid, nursing, doctor, and dubious medicinal herbalist backgrounds monitor displays and measure the rhythms of Liu’s body. An old non-combating Equalist, at Amon’s request, had recalled her life-long acupuncture career (cut short by water healers) and leaves needles pinned in Liu overnight.  
  
One brings up the possibility of inviting a neutral water healer. Amon politely declines, stating that the only thing bender that can help him is a time and will-bender. And besides, every night, when all the well-wishers and concerned ones had locked the door behind them exiting the ward, Amon takes off porcelain and forces nausea and bile down his throat, shoves self-loathing aside, and spreads fingers over Liu, hovering inches away from his slow beating heart. And through the hours, he will force sluggish blood through tissue starved of oxygen, quicken the tendrils so Liu’s body flushes warm, his bending aided by the strategic pins sticking all over his body. He imagines a scenario where Liu wakes up while Amon is bending with concentration on his unblemished face, he almost wishes for it. He bargains for hours to the silence, to spirits, take my face, take my sight, take my lies away so he will wake up.  
  
As always, the spirits don’t respond. They never do. They never did when Amon kneeled on bear hide and with tiny hands, wished for his and his brother’s bending to be removed, then begged for death to befall his father, and screamed to forfeit his life for a dusky afterlife and continued to scream in his mother’s arms as she wept, his brother holding his knees close to him and staring with blank eyes.  
  
The eighth night, Amon forgoes the bending and keeps his mask on and just holds Liu’s hand in his. The mask is his protection, it makes him feel secure and brave, if only a little. He takes heavy breaths through his nostrils and begins with a voice he only reserved for Liu, coarse from disuse, edges of his voice frayed from sorrow.  
  
“That was very stupid of you, you know. Turning on your kali sticks when that bender encased you in water. I was never in any danger.”  
  
 _Liu surrounded by shifting, bulbous water, slowly suffocating, the bender flicking daggers of ice at Amon as he rushes to help Liu. Amon catching Liu’s eyes and tries to say no no no no no no no no as Liu squeezes the button on his kali sticks. Daggers of water smashing into porcelain harmlessly._  
  
“The daggers would have turned to water as it approached me, and the water would have mysteriously dissipated, and I would blocked his chi, and then taken his bending. And you’d be awake, right now, reading books and asking me what this character meant and what this one meant as we lay together in a bed too tiny for the both of us,” Amon feels the mask lift ever so slightly in his half-hearted grin. “Instead, you gave yourself and that bender quite a shock! The bender died instantly, I hope you don’t have any similar ideas, yourself. Don’t you dare.”  
  
 _Liu lies in a convulsing heap, and the bender is twitching uncontrollably, barely alive. Amon strides to loom over Zolt’s second-in-command and holds out his hand like a claw, then clenches. He sees the blood surge into the heart and explode outward like red poppies, obscuring the bender’s bright chi pathways that blink out like lights. A flash of terror and a seizure and the bender stares up at Amon with darkened eyes, blood seeping lazily out eyes, nose, ears, mouth. Amon closes his eyes and sees the dead bender’s bright chi pathways on his eyelids colored in green, like looking at the sun and blinking._  
  
“The truth is…” Amon pauses, a geyser in his throat threatening to explode. “I’m a bender.”  
  
He breathes slowly, his voice cracks like a dropped egg, ”In fact, I’m the worst kind there is. I’m a bloodbender. Yakone is my father.” He takes big shuddering breaths, his guilt not at all alleviated by the confession, years late.  
  
“They’re not spirits, it’s just my damnable disgusting bending. I sever the blood vessels to do with bending, it’s the only good thing I can do. I hate myself too much to tell people the truth, so I invented a mask, a name, and a story that I’m too much of a coward to let go.”  
  
There are tears coming from the bottom of the mask, that slide down porcelain chin and drop and decorate gray tabard with darker gray dots.  
  
“I hate benders so much, for their tyranny, for their entitlement, for their power to tear apart families, people, lives. I hate myself most of all. And I can’t even take my own bending away, I’ve tried, I tried after I fell for you,” continues Amon, quietly, words flooded by sorrow. “You stood at my bedside for days, and how readily you believed me when I said I had really bad pneumonia that only Water Tribe people get.” Amon laughs emptily.  
  
He sinks his porcelain face to the top of Liu’s hand.  
  
“I don’t want you to hate me, but if it’ll bring you back, it’s okay. Please hate me. Please come back. I promise if you can’t hear this and you wake up, I will tell you everything,” swears Amon (a promise he does not keep because hiding is easier than truth, and relieved joy keeps even truths away).  
  
He lifts his head, salty tears arc over the bottom of his eyeholes and drip like rain on Liu’s veiny hands. Amon flips over Liu’s hand presses a finger to his palm and ghosts three characters in silence.  
  
我爱你  
 _I love you_


	6. Creation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes souls are drawn together, and two people have no choice but to be caught in each other's orbit. Eight chapter fic about Amon and his Lieutenant's developing relationship and beyond.
> 
> Day 6 (Creation): Amon and Liu are planning gifts for each other. Explicit.

Liu walks with waddling steps, his toes catch in wet sand and flings it upwards, as he scans the space between feet with concentrated brow and alert eyes. Occasionally, without rhythm, he stoops and digs his long fingers into the sand, coming away with a palm of wet sand and a sparkle of green or blue. Holding the sand in palm, he thumbs away the grains until he unearths a cloudy pebble, and it will be either the color of translucent seaweed, the cloudy, infinitely blue sky after a rainy day, or the soft blue of a glacier submerged in ocean. And sometimes, shades and hues in between.  
  
He blows on the stone to clear any stubborn particles of sand (and disturbs his wispy mustache in the process), and holds it up to the sun so blue or green or white dances like sunlight on water on his face. He drops the green/blue/icy stone into his back pocket, where it clinks against other stones. He turns around to head back into their base at Air Temple island, hands jammed into back pockets, their warmth spreading over cold stones.

***

  
“Are you going to tell me who this is for if I help you make it?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Is it that girl you promoted a few months ago? She’s been on an awful lot of missions with you, lately!”  
  
“No.”  
  
Hiroshi sighs. He takes the outstretched block of wood and examines it.  
  
“Willow? That’s a strange choice. It’s really soft and splinters easily. Electric tools won’t work on it. You’ll need some fine metal tools, a knife, and patience.”  
  
“I don’t mind.”  
  
Hiroshi sighs again, turns around, gently rotating by his large belly and faces his little workstation. He puts on his goggles and soon the sound of wood being buzzed into pieces fills the air.  
  
“I gave her one I forged out of steel I stole from the assembly line,” shouts Hiroshi over the din. “When I got more money, I made one out of white jade, and when I tried to give it to her, she dropped it and it shattered, so she just kept the rusty steel one.” He laughs at the memory.  
  
A few minutes later, he holds up a very splintery disk of wood the size of a coin with a hole in it, the size of a smaller coin. He hands it to Amon, and reaches into his tool box. He wonders briefly on why he has fewer metal files than he remembers, grabs a knife, and a small jar of glaze with smaller brushes and hands them to Amon.  
  
Amon politely thanks him, and walks away to his temporary office on Air Temple Island.  
  
“You better invite me!” Hiroshi calls after him.

***

Moments away from Amon are brief and rare, especially nearing their victory rally. He’ll excuse himself to the bathroom or to check on preparations for that and run down to his room, to his desk peppered with writing exercises, sweep his arm across to clear the papers unto floor, and slide the top drawer out and scatter sea-glass pebbles. He’s already narrowed it down to just ocean blues, discarding the clears and greens and ices.  
  
Inspiration sparks across his eyes, and he closes them. Imagines eyes with infinitely deep ocean hues in them. Pictures them in the shadow of porcelain, recalls the way they look when sunlight hits them. Remembers them in overcast, dawns, sunsets, lights of the pro-bending area, lights of the underground bunker, and the reflected white of snow.  
  
His eyes shoot open, he looks down, and finds the one, blue like his eyes, a misshapen oval. He sweeps his hands over the others into the drawer, they hit the wood with musical clack clacks.  
  
He reaches deeper in the drawer and grabs a metal file and he spends his small moments procured by white lies and excuses shaping the glass, grain by grain.  
  
In the back of his head, Liu settles on a wave, swirling strongly into a crest.

***

Amon very briefly considers that if he had to be cursed with any bending, Earthbending (specifically of wood, of which masters were few in the world) would aid him greatly in his current task. His entire tabard is sprinkled with wood splinters, his hands in pale dust, and this blasted thing wasn’t anywhere near being finished. He will have to steal more moments away from Liu, though it is strangely easier lately, as Liu seemed to be preoccupied with projects of his own. Amon does not think on it that much.  
  
Instead, he focuses on getting the disk smaller and smaller, trapping it between fingers (luckily free so far of painful splinters) and the metal file, fills his office with softly swirling golden air and minute, even-tempo scratches. He focuses so he can procrastinate on the prickly dread in the back of his head.  
  
He’s already picked out a quote. But he does not know how to start the conversation.

***

“Which ones you want?”  
  
“The ones in the case behind you.”  
  
“You mean the pineapple cakes? You know what occasion those are for, right?”  
  
“Well aware. I’ll take eight.”  
  
“Auspicious! Well, I guess two is too little, and four is too unlucky, and you wouldn’t get six for this occasion.” The wiry lady with friendly wrinkles behind the counter takes tongs and efficiently slides them into a red box. They’re squashed round pink and white cakes that fit in Liu’s palms, their surface softly flaking and cracking. A stamped 囍* in a square in red fades softly on the edges. She ties the box up in plastic pink twine and hands it to Liu, who hands coins and bills to her.  
  
“I bet she’s beautiful,” smiles the baker, as she takes off her gloves and accepts Liu’s money.  
  
Liu only smiles, tips his hat, and walks out.

***

  
His hands feel the phantom taps of pick against hammer against stone as he holds the finished stone in his hand. He lays it on the desk and jerks the flexible lamp to shine its light on the stone, and it casts rippling blue across its shadow, the ocean wave design exposing shine and catching fluorescent in its grooves.  
  
Liu smiles a smile of an artisan indulging in a rare moment of finished pride. He takes the thin red cord lying cast aside, loops it through the hole in the stone, and pulls the strands through, finishing it with a strong double knot. He holds up the finished necklace, dangling it and it swings like a pendulum, blue spots chasing it back and forth below it. He’s pleased he forewent the thick, velveteen dark ribbon typical of Water Tribe styles, he never wants to cover more of Amon’s neck than he already does with gray.  
  
Now he sits and considers a perfectly natural excuse to enter Amon’s office. He leans back in his chair, hands behind his head and ponders.

***

  
He finally dares to take a breath, after carving the last character into the inside of the ring. He wasn’t sure he would have enough room, and he had spent the better part of the last hour regretting his choice of quote. He rubs the sawdust away, feeling the characters texture the wood.  
  
Amon takes the small jar with the smaller brush and brushes the finished ring with viscous shiny glaze, clasping the ring between metal tongs, going so slow, chasing thick spots around until they thinned. He finishes in a short while, and he gently lays the ring on a metal plate in the top drawer of his desk, and he closes it.  
  
He stretches, and ponders an excuse to get Liu to come to his office. He settles on a particularly lame one, strides to his desk, and presses the intercom that connects to only one room.  
  
After he summons him up with “I have a proposal you need to look at”, Amon settles into his chair and works through the conversation in his head. Dread floods to the front of his mind. Truth always gives him a prickly feeling.

***

  
Liu enters carrying a wooden tray with a terracotta pot of chrysanthemum tea, the eight cakes arranged neatly on a red handkerchief. A package wrapped in brown and twine hides under his arm, which Amon assumes at sight to be his brown sketchbook.  
  
“Cakes, Liu?” inquires Amon, one eyebrow raised, and both hidden by porcelain. Hands hidden behind him, sweaty.  
  
Liu shrugs his bony shoulders, his lightning, veiny pale scar peeking through the neckline of his simple white undershirt. “I see no occasion for celebration, either. After all, the Avatar is in hiding, you’ve beaten back the Royal Navy and Iroh is nowhere to be found, you’ve dealt a crippling blow to the morale of all benders by taking away that woman’s bending, and you managed to capture air, literally. So no, I don’t see an occasion for cakes,” smiles Liu.  
  
It’s an opportunity to delay, and Amon gladly takes it as he strides to the low-lying lacquered table and sits opposite Liu. He pours tea for both of them, lifting the tea high and then low, keeping the stream of gold water constant as it patters into terracotta cups. They take simultaneous sips, Liu’s eyes never leaving porcelain, as Amon gently grabs a cake and considers the red on top of it.  
  
“Double happiness? That’s cheerful.” He lifts his mask and takes a bite. Liu is used to recognizing the motions, Amon is used to knowing that Liu will always close his eyes. He chews the flaky, gummy, sweet texture. “These are quite delectable,” he exclaims.  
  
Liu figures he can tell Amon the significance of the cakes later. He briefly wonders what Water Tribe customs are, before he clears his throat, “Actually, Amon, I have something-”  
  
“Me first,” muffles Amon through half-chewed pineapple cake. He drops his mask down, takes it out of his pocket, and pokes Liu in the knee with it.  
  
Liu slowly opens his eyes, and looks down. “A book?” He takes it in his hand, it’s blue, with a simple cover, and just a name in the front. He reads it aloud “Poems of…Zhuo Wen Jun? Amon, I think this is too hard for me.” His tone is unsure, and just a bit confused.  
  
“She was a famous poet that lived in the time of Avatar Yangchen. Read the first poem for me, don’t worry, I know you can. I’ll wait.” Amon leans back into the hard lacquer bench, dreadful anticipation coiling from his stomach into his throat.  
  
Liu fixes Amon with a raised eyebrow, reaches for his square spectacles hanging on his neckline, places them on and reads, his eyebrows scrunched together, looking for all the world like a scholar. Amon is spinning the conversation in his head again, imagining worst case and best case scenarios, as he watches Liu’s expression change from curiosity, to intense concentration, to small smiles on the corners of his mouth, and finally into tears tracing a silent path down his long face, parallel to his mustache. In a very congested voice, he remarks, “That was beautiful.” He fixes Amon with damp, icy eyes and a smile spreads from the center up into the corners. “And I could read it!”  
  
Amon smiles with his eyes, his heart beating in terror. “Liu, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell y-”  
  
“Me first,” interrupts Liu. He slides the brown paper package from under his arm and hands it to Amon, who takes it with wary hands. He places in his lap and unties the twine, unfolds the paper, and beholds the eight smooth bamboo tablets with holes at the top, the size of his hand. There’s beautiful black lines drawn on each one.  
  
Amon’s voice is very small. “These are…” He shuffles them, reads them aloud, “Ming, Zhu, Fong, Atka…”  
  
“Chu, Ulva, Tian, and Mei.” Liu finishes. He sways his shoulders, looks away, and down. “I figure we can think about putting these up together after the victory rally. Make a proper shrine, you know?” Liu rubs his palms together, waiting, feeling the weight of the stone in his back pocket, digging a little into his rear, sitting on that hard lacquered bench.  
  
Amon feels that part below his eyes tingle and start to burn, and he quietly gets up and walks to the desk, leaning on it with his arms out, looking down.  
  
“Amon? Did I upset you?” Liu asks, concerned, rising from the bench.  
  
“No, no not at all. They’re beautiful. They’re fitting tributes to them.”  _Yet they died for me, a bloodbender covered in porcelain and lies._ Amon fingers the top drawer where he can almost see the drying wood ring inside. He has to get it out. The truth. And maybe the ring, depending on how the truth fares. “Listen, Liu….”  
  
He trails off as warm hands wrap around his waist and clasp in front. He pushes his face past hood and breathes tickling hot breath on Amon’s earlobe. “I’m listening…,” he exhales.  
  
Amon freezes, his backbone turned to bamboo. He can feel his courage slipping out like water through a sieve. Words of conversations replayed in his head crumbling like incense burned for too long, along with carefully-crafted words on tongue. And also, an ill-timed immediate need and distraction flooding his awareness.  
  
Liu does not help, as he adorns Amon’s ear lobe with a light kiss. He returns with harder kiss, his lips inhaling his ear. He finishes with a bite that causes a jump. But Liu’s clasped arms trap him. He spreads his hands and fingers and slides them down gray. He clutches through linen and Amon jerks back into Liu, his back curving gently down, a sigh wheezing through a porcelain slit. His head falls forward and frees itself of his hood.  
  
Liu continues to palm with his hands, slowly rotating, rubbing with palm, his fingers covering off fabric. Grabbing and unclenching at predictable intervals. The heaviness, rate, and heat of Amon’s breathing increasing predictably. Liu stops, and pulls tabard up clutch by clutch, trapping it behind his thin wrists as he dives both hands to grab tufts of chestnut hair and wet heat. And finally, Liu hears what he wants to hear: a gasp that turns into a moan, Amon’s head curled back unto his shoulders, neck muscles tense. Liu imagines the mouth open under porcelain.  
  
Amon’s torso sinks further down into the desk, his body still curved softly, his elbows on hard wood. He grabs at papers, turning them into crinkled rosettes. His mind a fog of arousal, regret, and Liu’s heady presence behind him. It clears enough as soon as he hears Liu fumbling at the drawer with one hand, the other one rhythmically pumping him. He grabs Liu’s wrist before it goes into the drawer, with a “Let me.” Liu acquiesces and returns his other hand to Amon’s rapidly increasing heat.  
  
Amon’s fingers taps the bottom of the drawer, trying to find the bottle. He feels his hand brush the ring, smooth from the coating he painted on just minutes ago, and knocks if off the metal plate it was drying on with a clatter. His hazy mind resolves to find it later, and wraps his fingers around the bottle. He takes it out and shoves the drawer close with sloppy movements as Liu continues on his relentless campaign between his legs.  
  
“Stand back for a moment,” commands Amon through breathy, throaty tones, hand already smeared in gel, the bottle discarded at the far corner of his desk, cap barely on. Liu obeys and withdraws his warm hands, Amon suppresses a shiver. With the other hand on the desk, paper stuck to the sweaty palm, he swings the other hand around, pulls down his trousers excruciatingly slow, leaving gel spots, and slips his fingers in, tails of his coat flipped to the side. He undulates his hand, like it’s made of water, his pinky and thumb spread in opposite directions on the curve. There’s a clink as the forehead of mask hits wood, eyes halfway shut. Amon’s whole body possessed of the motions of his hand, his body, too, undulates into his hand, he can feel his abs twitch every now and then. He’s vaguely aware that he’s being very noisy, slipping out moans like words.  
  
A very low growl is all the warning Amon hears before he feels a rough hand clasp around fabric in the middle of his back and shove him into wood. The side of his face(mask) hits wood with a deep clink, his hands having reacted fast enough to brace against the wood, elbows in the air. He feels the tails of his coat being lifted up and feels stale air against bare skin before he feels Liu place himself in between and forces his hips forward, slowly, but impatiently. The overwhelming sense of completeness results in an audible declaration of Liu’s name from Amon.  
  
Liu returns his declaration with his own three words, and he folds himself into the gentle S-curve of Amon’s back like lock and key. He wraps arms around waist, all elbows, and starts his hips, back and forth, back and forth, pushing Amon further into the desk, the desk protesting with knocks. Amon’s back gets pulled back slightly with every withdrawal, and clenches forward with every gradually stronger slam. He’s crying out various vocalizations of vowel sounds, his heat trapped like sweat between skin and fabric, lips and porcelain. His mask thudding against desk, papers and writing instruments hopping, skipping, over the surface.  
  
In a short time, Liu has to straighten up, tightens fingers around Amon’s shoulder like a claw, with other hand hooking itself into the belt of Amon’s outfit, and pulls both back as he pushes further and harder, linen of Amon’s tails chafing moderately against his skin. He feels the weight of the pendant in his back pocket, forcing him forward, lending him strength to pound as hard as he can into Amon, whose back is curving more and more backwards, his hips drifting backwards in time to Liu, clenching sweet heat all around.  
  
It’s surging faster and faster inside of him, gaining force, momentum, heat. A burst of fullness, and Amon tumbles over and down the waterfall. For the first time, Amon shouts, all memory, restraints, and decorum banished, his everything clenched, frozen as he hurtles impossibly high. He spills into the front of the desk, and it slides down the drawer where a wooden ring lies lost somewhere. Liu’s name hangs in the air where Amon shouted it.  
  
Liu follows soon after, the sudden tightness and his name ringing in his ears much too much and he whips both hands down to Amon’s hipbones, digging fingers in as he feels his heat dissipate into Amon, filling in like water around pebbles, leaking out like rivulets. He follows up with a few half-hearted, weakened pounds, his lover twitching, arcing, below him. He then withdraws, a thin line connecting them.  
  
Amon, with a pull of will and the little strength he has left, rolls over and outstretches arms to Liu. He falls into Amon’s embrace, his head below mask, his lips decorating Amon’s sweat-draped neck with languid kisses, his mustache draped on Amon’s clavicle, his arms on either side of him, his legs and lower body between twitching thighs. They both close their eyes to feel each other’s small vibrations better, little shakes that follow each other and feed off each other. Thoughts are slowly churning to the surface in both their heads.  
  
There’s a dim need in Liu’s head to reach into his back pocket and snake out the red cord followed by ocean blue pendant. He doesn’t act on it, and lets the action go unacted upon. He figures the next time, after the victory rally, he can kiss instead of look and he can slip red cord around chestnut hair and a face with no porcelain and catch the glint of the pendant in his eye.  
  
The matter of telling Liu the truth has reduced itself to a shallow concern in the afterglow of their romp. Amon is aware of the presence of ring with a quote carved inside below him, but it seems far away. After the victory rally, he will tell Liu the truth about imaginary scars and his all-too-real bending. Depending on how he reacts, Amon will fish the wood ring out of the contents of the drawer, ask Liu to read it aloud before Amon takes it and slips it on Liu’s hand.  
  
They think to themselves,  _we have all the time in the world_ , and they wrap themselves further into each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The symbols on the cakes are double happiness, a common character used as a motif in Chinese weddings, especially for bridal cakes, which are given as a symbol of betrothal. The character for Liu that I’m using as a headcanon means willow, the number 6 is reserved for occasions regarding money. The word for 6 is also Liu, but of a different tone and character. Also Zhuo Wu Jun was a real person, she lived during the Han Dynasty.


	7. Devotion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes souls are drawn together, and two people have no choice but to be caught in each other's orbit. Eight chapter fic about Amon and his Lieutenant's developing relationship and beyond.
> 
> Day 7 (Devotion): POST FINAL SPOILERS. Amon survives the boat ride.

Amon struggles in a mass of gray and seawater and terror, cold seeping into his everywhere. His instincts are seized into action before he’s aware of his arms sweeping around him, forcing the heavy water into spirals, into densities he can control. He pushes towards what he hopes to be up, spinning, spiraling, a white drill in the middle of sea. His hope is rewarded as he feels his head burst through water, he takes a great big shuddering breath in the cold air of dusk. The waters are choppy, they grab at Amon with waves and cold and sprays. He’s too weak, he can’t bend them or else unconsciousness will grab him and he will sink to the sea.  
  
He twists his head around, vision blurring by water and shock, his ears ringing, though luckily not bleeding. There’s flames, some remnants of wood, metal, and glass floating like islands. “Tarrlok! Tarrlok!” In the center of his bones, he knows that his brother unlikely survived the explosion. Amon isn’t quite sure how he did, either, and without injury. He remembers the heat, the boom, and then water all around in him, and crushing disappointment. His bending is more ingrained in him than he thought, spurred by the instinct to survive, he thinks this with bitterness. He calls out some more, but no body, no surprised gasps of air, no bits, nothing except for him, the flaming wreckage, and endless water.  
  
He’s tired, feels weakness in his bones. He wants to just sink to the bottom of the sea, so no one will find him, not even his bones, but Amon isn’t sure if he can stand being alive after failing to kill himself, as he has in the past. And then, he’s crying. Crying with great big heaving sobs in the middle of his ocean, his tears rejoining the ocean. Truly, utterly alone. His cowardice has cost him his love, and his family. Death is too good for him. He will survive, that will be his punishment. He turns towards the direction he came from, orienting himself by his knowledge of water currents, and begins to swim, expending a little energy with bending to propel him forward.  
  
It takes an eternity, or maybe no time at all, but he catches sight of the shore. Laboriously, one hand in front of the other (having run out of energy to bend half a mile or three back) his water-logged torso cruises on rocks, then watery sand, then wet sand. He pulls himself unto the bank, his face lying on its side, his sight level with sand, breathing large breaths that can’t seem to stem his short breaths. His eyes start to flutter shut, his vision clouds, his mind full of weariness and regret. The beach around him is blurring on the edges. He even shuts them a few times, only for his eyelids to spring open, his heart pounding, his mind not wanting to fall asleep.  
  
It’s on one of these near falls into sleep that he catches something in the distance. It’s blurry at the edges, like everything else, but it sticks out against the background. It looks like a stick, and as it gets closer, it splits into two sticks at the bottom. Then sprouts two sticks on the side. The weird multi-branched stick then seems to break into a run at Amon, as he lies almost facedown in wet sand. It’s very curious, but that isn’t enough and Amon’s eyes shut.  
  
They snap open and he’s being held by strong, concerned arms. His eyes focus, and he tries to shake the blurriness away, and things start to come into focus. A pale person. With a little bit of wrinkles. Defined cheekbones. A head of short, black hair. A long face, and long whiskers from the upper lip, like a catfish. And a concerned look. “Are you alright?” Liu asks.  
  
Amon shoots up, grabs Liu’s shoulders, shock and relief and terror and regret and sheer utter love in his eyes. He swings his arms around Liu’s familiar, bony shoulders, holding him tight like he will sink into the sand. “You’re alive! You’re alive!” Amon shouts, disbelief, grief, shame at the edges of his voice. “I’m sorry,” he sobs, “I’m so sorry. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. But you’re alive, and I’m so sorry. For everything. I love you. I love you. I love you,” he repeats, over and over again, into Liu’s ears.  
  
Liu doesn’t react. He holds his arms out, frozen, not reacting. Amon relaxes his embrace, lets reality sink in and drown his hope. Of course Liu wouldn’t forgive Amon. But that was okay. Amon didn’t deserve his forgiveness. His warmth. His love. His happy ending.  
  
Amon pulls apart, looking down, his elbows locked, holding Liu away. “It’s okay if you want me to go away. Or if you want to punch me, even kill me,” states Amon, his voice broken. He’d welcome punishment, especially from Liu.  
  
There’s no response. Amon dares to lift his head, and looks at those icy blue eyes of Liu’s. He’s staring back. Something vast is missing from them. Amon realizes what it is before Liu says the words.  
  
“Who are you?” he inquires, his brow knit in confusion.  
  
 _Of course_ , he thinks to himself. This is my punishment.  _Of course it is_. He releases Liu’s shoulders, and sinks his knees into wet sand. He falls back unto his feet, and shifts so that he’s sitting on the beach, looking out over the sea, dusk in the sky, his arms around his knees, head down. “No one important,” he answers, in a dead tone.  
  
He hears Liu gingerly sit down next to him, cross his legs, and look in the same direction as Amon. Amon can feel the small pieces of his broken heart shatter into dust. It’s torture, but he doesn’t move. If it’s torture, he must endure it.  
  
“Whatever you say. I have another question,” continues Liu, looking at his dejected companion. “Why are you wearing a mask?”  
  
Amon looks up. Mask? He lifts his hands to his face and feels cool porcelain, and he’s suddenly aware of his limited range of vision. His mind is full of confusion, his hands full of fumbling and he stops at the edge of the mask.  
  
There is no edge. Porcelain is fused gently, gradually into skin. Amon looks around, panicked, senses suddenly sharp, aware. The sea is shining a gentle white light from below, the sky is pregnant with dusk hues, but there’s no sun or moon. He grabs the sand, lets it slip through his fingers, it glints lavender in the light of the sea, the dusk of the sky. And time, he can feel it. It’s condensed, but thin, it’s flowing and it’s utterly frozen, like a river in the coldest of winters.  
  
Realization, acceptance, resignation. Amon experiences all of them at once, or maybe after a long eternity. He doesn’t know, and he knows he won’t ever. He looks at Liu, with sad eyes hooded by porcelain, and answers, “This is my face.”  
  
“Oh,” Liu answers, in a small voice, awkward. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean offense.”  
  
Amon looks back across the ocean, how ghostly it looks. It’s fitting. “No, no it’s fine,” he reassures. He wonders if the spirits cursed him with the face, or he did it to himself. Figures, that the mask is now his face. He wonders, bitterly, if his bending prevented him from losing his mind, or if his bending was what caused Liu to lose his. Awkward silence stretches between them, who knows for how long, when Liu politely clears his throat and breaks it.  
  
“So…why were you apologizing to me? What did you do?” He adds in a smaller voice, “If you don’t mind sharing, that is.”  
  
Amon smiles under his mask, it’s a bitter, insincere smile. “I thought you were someone I knew. A dead-ringer, actually. I…” he trails off, sucks breath in through nose slits and his frowning smiling mouth, “…did something terrible. Unforgivable. I don’t deserve forgiveness, I hurt the person I loved. Still love. But I don’t know if I’ll ever find this person again. Probably not.” Amon reaches into his pocket, wonders if it’ll still be there. The willow ring is, so he takes it out, and holds it out to the horizon, pretending it’s a hollow, wooden sun in a sea of flight.  
  
Liu beholds it, too. “Must have been some woman, that’s a beautiful ring,” he exclaims.  
  
Amon laughs in good humor. Sincerely. It was Liu. It was just a Liu that wasn’t his. Liu regards the silence that follows as offense.  
  
“S-sir! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to presume! I’m…spirits, I don’t mind!” frets Liu, his hands waving in mild panic. “Whatever you are, it’s okay with me,” he clarifies further, his ears turning red, then his cheeks. The words ring hollow inside of Amon.  
  
“No no, it’s fine. I wasn’t offended. Really, I wasn’t, it’s just…” he trails off again, “Nevermind. Anyway I’m…” he pauses again, sounding it out in his head, on his tongue first, before he says it, “…I’m Noatak. What is your name, stranger?” His ‘name’ still rings false to his ears.  
  
Liu’s brow wrinkles together, as he stares out at the ocean, one hand clasping something around his neck. “I actually don’t know.”  
  
“You don’t…” The new development was not unexpected, but it punches Amon in the chest all the same.  
  
“No, not at all. I just woke up on this beach, saw you lying in the sand, thought you were dead or dying, so I rushed over. And here we are!” Liu sweeps his hand around.  
  
“Aren’t you concerned at all about your lack of memory?”  
  
“To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. It’s like whether I care or not about that isn’t even there. But, well, you’re interesting to talk to, so I figure whatever I am trying to find if I am even trying to find it at all can wait.” He smiles a thin smile, almost happy-go-lucky. A very small spot warms on Amon’s heart. He points at Liu’s clasped hand.  
  
“What is that around your neck?”  
  
Liu unfurls his hand finger by finger, and holds the blue pendant up his its red cord against the sky. “Something important. That’s all I know. I’m supposed to do something with it, but I can’t really remember what. But it’s comforting to fiddle with and looks really lovely, here, have a look,” he holds out the stone, Amon stretches out his hand and Liu drops it in, cord still around his neck, leaning towards Amon.  
  
Amon considers it, the blue stone, the hand-carved wave motif, with a softly swirling crest. He can feel tears come to his eyes, and he’s glad of the mask for once, to camouflage his eyes. This Liu isn’t keen on the minute details of expression that Amon wears like a sleeve.  
  
“It’s very, very beautiful,” agrees Amon, flipping over his palm so the pendant swings back to Liu’s chest.  
  
“What about yours? What’s on the inside of that ring?” Liu points a bony finger at the willow ring that Amon had absent-mindedly put on his thumb. He pulls it off and holds it out to Liu. He takes it between forefinger and thumb, and looks inside.  
  
“Can you read it?”  
  
“Hmm, I think so. 愿得一人心，白首不相离 ( _If I combine my heart with another to form one, we will never part even ‘till our heads are white*_ ). That is a very beautiful quote, surprised you could fit that much in it!” Liu slips it unto his left ring finger “Hey, would you look at that, it fits me.” Liu holds out his left hand, ring and pale hand framed against dusk.  
  
Amon smiles inside his mask, an honest grin ear to ear. “Do you recognize it?”  
  
Liu looks up, as if he can find the answers floating invisibly above his head. “Zhuo Wen Jun, right? I may not remember my name, but I remember her! You have good taste, friend.” He looks very pleased with himself. He hands the ring back to Amon. “Tell me about him.”  
  
Amon takes a deep breath. His heart aches beyond what a body can endure, but he supposed that doesn’t matter now. There are worst ways to spend eternity. He suppose he’s lucky to not be in any of the Hells (if they even exist), being torn apart, burned, frozen, or stabbed or watching himself kill Liu, over and over again.  
  
So he tells Liu about Liu. About how his farmer parents died because they couldn’t afford basic medicine. How his sister had died in childbirth and her family shunning him. How he joined the army to save himself from poverty. How all his decorations and rank couldn’t save him from his non-bending and illiteracy. His career as a cook, as an exterminator, as a scrap metal collector. As a reluctant rebel.  
  
Amon tells Liu about how Liu didn’t know he was in love until he was. About how he, himself, stumbled into his love for Liu through congee and devotion and his writing. He recalls the night Liu drew three characters on their shared wall, fondly retells how he taught Liu to write the character for nation, remembers vividly their night of reciprocation over grief and noodles (he spares this Liu the steamy details out of respect), reminiscences all the small moments or blindfold and mask and passion and mornings (and nights).  
  
He interrupts himself a few times to educate Liu on the background of Equalists, benders, and an Avatar.  
  
He talks about the time Liu got gravely injured. (“I confessed my lies to him while he was at death’s door.”)  
  
He talks about how he was too afraid to tell Liu the truth (“I was making his ring and I still didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth.”)  
  
He talks about the time in the arena. With halting tones, and Liu keeps a respectful silence when Amon has to disrupt his retelling with pregnant pauses, with tears he can’t wipe away.  
  
He fills eternity with stories about Liu (or maybe an hour or a minute or several eternities, time is strange in realm of spirits), and Liu listens intently, sometimes asking questions, mostly keeping silent, nodding sympathetically, utterly attentive.  
  
There are worse ways to pass eternity.  
  
One day, one week, one month, one year, or decade, or century, or millennia, or eternity, Liu interrupts Amon in the middle of his very gestural recollection of Liu’s injuries and his recovery with a question, “Hey Noatak, if you reunited with Liu, what would you say to him?”  
  
He does not hesitate. He’s been thinking it for eternities and moments.  
  
“He dedicated his life to me. So I would tell him that I devoted my eternity to him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I roughly translated what the inside of the ring says. It’s loaded with meaning and you can interpret it lots of ways, it’s sort of hard to convey, so I hope you get the idea!


	8. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes souls are drawn together, and two people have no choice but to be caught in each other's orbit. Eight chapter fic about Amon and his Lieutenant's developing relationship and beyond.
> 
> Day 8 (Epilogue): Amon and Liu continue their eternity in the spirit world.

The nice thing about the spirit world is that bodies will never tire, never hunger, never sleep. That’s also a terrible thing, sometimes, but in the case of Amon and Liu, sitting on the beach while Amon tells Liu about his own life, it is fine.  
  
There are times Amon’s spirits are low, talking to the love of his soul like he was dead when he is sitting right in front of him, fantasizing about Liu getting his memory back (or dreading it) and being crushed by the magnitude of forever. But he promised to himself and to a shadow of a person that he would torture himself, invigorate himself, and pass the eternity with a stranger in the shell of a lover. It was his punishment, his purgatory, maybe sometimes a droplet of heaven when memories are sweet and humorous and easy to recall and they both guffawed into the dusky air for hours and minutes and lifetimes.  
  
Amon finishes a story about a disastrous date where they both sneaked out to a theater to watch a moving picture, and Liu is silent. Amon is about to start wondering when Liu raises his hands to his necklace and lifts it off, his mustache catching on the cord, blue stone dangling from cord made taut by Liu’s hands. He drapes it past chestnut hair, porcelain, and surprised eyes. Amon looks down, peering at the wave-engraved stone between fingers, still warm from Liu’s chest.  
  
“I want you to have it,” he states, his tone strongly advising against otherwise, his ice eyes piercing, as they always are, with or without history behind them.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“It’s my thanks for the stories.” He rises, wiping sand from his thighs. Amon shoots up, panic resurfacing after forever, its clammy feeling not dulled by disuse.  
  
“You’re leaving?” He’s grasping Liu’s shoulders. “Are you leaving?” He twists his hands into Liu’s shirt, looking up with wide ocean blue eyes framed in porcelain into ice.  
  
“Yes,” replies Liu, in a frustratingly conversational way.  
  
And Amon can’t help it, he forgets himself as he shouts, “Please don’t! No no no no no, please don’t!” Eternity yawns at him with loneliness, he’d rather burn forever in the deepest pits of hell. He’s sobbing. It wasn’t Liu, yet this Liu he still loved was leaving. “I can’t lose you, please, not again!” He sinks his porcelain into the nook of neck and Liu’s head, sobs tears he can’t wipe away.  
  
Liu gently pulls him away, his expression indiscernible as he locks eyes with Amon. He smiles.  
  
“You’re coming with me.”  
  
Confusion.  
  
“I don’t…” Amon doesn’t manage to start the next word when Liu lifts his hands to the sides of Amon’s face. Amon feels his fingers slip inside of the mask, and it comes away, just like that. It drops into the lavender sand, a frowning smiling face. Liu wipes tears away from shocked eyes, his fingers like milk against milk black tea. Then he kisses him. Soft lips against soft lips, it lasts for a moment (an eternity).  
  
When they finally come away, Liu holds Amon’s face by his cheeks, softly brushing his thumbs against cheekbones. He smiles, it’s familiar. It’s familiar again.  
  
“You look beautiful under the mask, Amon.” And he kisses milk black tea lips again, deeper, longer, mustache tickling Amon’s face, Amon salting the reunion with steady tears made of joy, relief, happiness. They are both the air the other needs to exist, to be whole. They hold each other closer with tight arms and tighter embraces. They come away after another eternal moment, and Amon has a sad look in his eyes again.  
  
“I’m sorry, Liu. Can you forgive me?”  
  
“You were always forgiven, even if I didn’t know it. Now, we should get ready.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
“To leave.” Liu points at the horizon where sky kisses sea, their hands clasped. There’s light rising. A sun. For the first time in forever. Amon doesn’t know what it means. But he’s aware, in the bottom of his soul, that they are leaving together.  
  
“But we just found each other,” remarks Amon, sadly.  
  
“And I promise you I will find you again, and you damn well better promise to find me,” asks Liu, his voice nostalgically gruff. The sun is creeping its light across the water, light dancing on its way to the beach.  
  
Amon looks down at their hands, his right and Liu’s left, he gingerly grabs Liu’s and lifts his hand, removes the wood ring from his thumb and slides it on Liu’s finger. Liu can feel the characters on the inside of the ring, rubbing soothingly against his skin. Amon then drops his hand back and slips his fingers into Liu’s, they fit together. “Better,” he says, with the shadow of a smile, feeling the solidness of the wood ring against soft skin and bony fingers.  
  
They hug as the light of the sun hits them and engulfs them in light that feels warm, friendly, and new. It’s an embrace frozen in seconds, in moments, in forevers, at least until the next forever. They don’t manage to finish the three words they say to each other, but then again they never had to because they already knew.

***

_The nurse examines the older man’s wrist, a look of annoyance on her face._   
  
_“It’s just a fracture,” she reassures._   
  
_“A fracture of my writing wrist, I’ll have you know! What am I going to do in the weeks I can’t do my job?!” The man’s chin-length mustache, arched eyebrows and square squat eyeglasses framing ocean-blue eyes make him seem more annoyed than he actually is._   
  
_“Not my problem, wait here, I’ll go fetch the healer.” She exits the room more quickly than is deemed polite. After a period of time, a leather-jacket clad younger man with dark skin and dark hair and a small goatee with eyes the color of ice enters the room with a helmet in hand._   
  
_“You! You’re the one who hit me! What are you doing here?” The older man demands._   
  
_“I’m afraid I’m the healer. I’m really sorry I hit you with my motorbike. I didn’t expect anyone to be mopping the middle of Korra Square.” The younger man looks down, sheepishly._   
  
_The other man rolls his eyes, “It’s water calligraphy. I practice and express with water and it evaporates in a few minutes. It’s an **art**.”_   
  
_“Why do you do it?” The younger man is very earnest._   
  
_The other fixes him with a look over his glasses, to make sure he wasn’t being insincere. “I’m a professor of calligraphy at Sato University. I’m Dr. Yang.”_   
  
_“Well, that means I should fix you right up,” he draws bubbles of water in both his hands from the filtered water in the corner of the room. The professor flinches away from him when he comes near._   
  
_“Don’t break anything else,” he warns._   
  
_“I promise I won’t,” he puts his water-encased hands on the man’s wrist, the professor can already feel the pain subsiding, he allows himself a sigh of relief. “I’m Noatak.”_   
  
_The professor raises his eyebrows, “Like the rebel leader half a century before? Amon, was it?”_   
  
_Noatak laughs nervously. “Afraid so, small village in the North Pole, just so happened to be next to a river, tragically little awareness of the outside world. I even had a classmate named Ozai. Poor sod. I’ve been meaning to change my name for a while.”_   
  
_Dr. Yang ponders a bit, then finally says, “I think it sounds fine.”_   
  
_“Haha, thanks. Anyway, I’m really sorry about that, Dr. Yang.”_   
  
_“Call me Liu*. And quit it, I can’t stay mad at you, too damn polite.”_   
  
_Noatak laughs lightly. “Okay, you should be fine to write a little bit today, but don’t overdo it, and keep coming back to me over the next few days, should be good as new in a week, no need to miss work because of my bad situational awareness.”_   
  
_“Okay, I can do that.”_   
  
_As Noatak bandages up Yang’s hand, they lock eyes, and they both break into simultaneous smiles for reasons they don’t understand. At least not now._   
  
_And then they laugh. Like old souls._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yangliu means willow tree


End file.
